Los Angeles, March 10 (IANS) Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey, who is known for ‘Interstellar’, admitted to being nervous on the first day shooting on ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’.
The actor, with his right eye swollen from a bee sting, walked onto the set, raised his hand and asked, “Is anybody else nervous except for me?”, reports ‘Variety’.
The cast and crew let out a collective laugh. “Alright, alright, alright, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one”, the actor said, sounding like a mixture of a preacher and a surfer with his signature drawl.
As per ‘Variety’, but the actor wasn’t joking. He admits he felt creaky returning to the screen after a six-year hiatus, during which he wrote a memoir, ‘Greenlights’, recorded a few voice roles in films like ‘Sing 2’, spent time with his family and kept a lower profile.
“I needed to write my own story, direct my own story on the page”, Matthew said of his time away from being in front of the camera.
But when he came across Andrew Patterson’s script, which focused on the charismatic owner of a honey operation in Oklahoma and his relationship with his foster child, he was drawn to its originality and strong sense of place. The part fit like a worn-in pair of jeans. “It’s not where I grew up, but I know of these kind of people and these places and these kind of characters that live in the middle of the country”, the actor shared. “This group of people in southeast Oklahoma where the film takes place know the Constitution, they know the rules they are living by, and they’re not looking for or getting approval from the rest of the world. I understand them”.
Patterson had labored on the project for years, enlarging it at one point into a seven episode mini-series, before shrinking it back down again. He always felt that McConaughey possessed the free-wheeling charm that he needed for Amziah, who has a roving band of bee-keepers and musicians who follow him like a caravan of apostles.
–IANS
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